Throughout the specification and claims, we will be using the term MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group). MPEG is a generic reference to a family of international standards, which define how to encode visual and audio information in a digital compressed format. MPEG is utilized in a wide variety of applications, including DVD (Digital Video Discs) and DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting).
A key feature of MPEG is that it can compress a video signal into a fraction of its original size. MPEG achieves a high compression for video by storing only the changes from one video frame to another, instead of each entire frame. This compression process is known as encoding and is done by an encoder. At the receiving end of an MPEG transmission, there exists a decoder, which decodes the transmission and restores it as best it can to the video signal originally encoded.
There are two major MPEG standards: MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. The most common implementations of the MPEG-1 standard provide video quality slightly below the quality of conventional VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) videos. MPEG-2 provides higher resolution, with full CD quality audio. This is sufficient for the major TV standards, including NTSC (National Standards Television Committee) and HDTV (High Definition Television).
Of the series of MPEG standards that describe and define the syntax for video broadcasting, the standard of relevance to the present invention is ISO/IEC IS 13818-2, ITU-T Recommendation H.262, titled “Generic coding of moving frames and associated audio information: Video,” which is incorporated herein by reference and is hereinafter referred to as “the MPEG-2 standard”.
An MPEG video transmission is essentially a series of pictures taken at closely spaced time intervals. Often a picture may be quite similar to the one that precedes it or the one that follows it. For example, video of waves washing up on a beach would change little from picture to picture. Except for the motion of the waves, the beach and sky would be largely the same. Once the scene changes, however, some or all similarity may be lost. The concept of compressing the data in each picture relies upon the fact that many images do not change significantly from picture to picture. Thus, considerable savings in data transmission can be made by transmitting only the differences between pictures, as opposed to the entire picture. In the MPEG-2 standard a picture is referred to as a “frame”. This is terminology we will use from now on.
Since the MPEG-2 standard specifies only bitstream syntax for compressed video, a number of methods have been proposed to improve the picture quality of compressed digital video produced by a video encoder. Among the most effective of these are the following:                1) Pre-filtering        2) Bitrate allocation based on the human visual system        3) Rate-distortion optimal motion vector search and mode-decisions        4) Two-step encoding with a look-ahead buffer for accurate rate-control, buffer management, and smoothing of CBR video quality.        5) Dynamic GOP (Group of Picture) control        
This invention addresses an improved method and system relating to item 5).